Mind, Body and Spirit Makeover

Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Your mental health affects all aspects of your life. An unhealthy mind can cause mental and emotional wounds. In contrast, a healthy mind can help bring more peace and happiness into your life.

By developing your mind, you can have greater knowledge and better understanding of the world around you. Instead of creating pain and suffering for yourself, you can gain wisdom from your life experiences.

By achieving mental healing and wellness, you can put your intelligence to its best possible use. It can enhance your appreciation of your relationships, your work and your life.

Your thoughts and emotions are closely intertwined. How often have you heard yourself say, “I’m so angry (stressed, guilty, anxious or miserable) that I can’t think straight.” The opposite is also true. Not thinking straight can cause you to have more stress, anger, anxiety, guilt and misery.

Faulty thinking can cause pain and suffering. In contrast, thinking straight can prevent as well as relieve pain and suffering.

By avoiding faulty thinking and learning to think clearly, you can prevent and solve problems in your life. You can improve the quality of your life.

How Do You Change Your Faulty Thinking Pattern and Achieve Mental Healing?

In order to achieve mental healing, you need to be aware of your thinking patterns and underlying belief systems. By understanding the way you think, you can develop the ability to consciously choose your beliefs, attitudes and values in a way that makes most sense to you

Most people pick up certain beliefs, attitudes and values through the influences of family, friends, culture, religion, schooling and life experiences. You may not be conscious of your core beliefs. Once you become aware of them, you can start making more conscious choices about your beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations and other ideas.

To become aware of your core beliefs, pay attention to repetitive thoughts that cross your mind. It’s a good idea to start writing down some of your repetitive thoughts and beliefs. This is a good way to become more aware of your thinking patterns.

If you notice a recurring thinking pattern, think about where it came from. Did you pick it up from your parents or someone else in your family? Is it based upon an underlying core belief? Is it a popular misconception? Is it one of the rules you learned as a child?

As you become more aware of your thinking patterns and underlying belief systems, you will start to realize that some of them support you in your personal growth and development while others limit you or get in the way of your happiness and life satisfaction.

At first, you may not be aware of your thinking patterns and underlying belief systems that limit or control your life.

How your beliefs can control your life is shown by this story about the way baby elephants are trained in India. According to Deepak Chopra, trainers chain one hind leg of a baby elephant to a large tree. In a short time, the elephant gets used to the chain and no longer tries to get away. As the elephant is growing, the trainers keep reducing the size of the chain restraining it.

After a while, the elephant gets so conditioned to the restraint that even a tiny string around its hind leg can keep it from getting away. The chain or the tiny string is not keeping the elephant restrained. It is the belief that it is restrained.

Like the mentally restrained elephant, your underlying belief systems can limit your life. Your belief systems can color your view of the world. You can keep interpreting and re-creating your world based on your core beliefs about yourself, other people and your life.

As you encounter new and different life experiences, new perspectives may challenge your beliefs.

As you learn new ideas and viewpoints, you can weigh them against the ones you already hold. You can start letting go of old ideas that are too limiting for you while retaining the ones that still support your personal growth and development. As you become more conscious and mature, you can incorporate new ideas that are more empowering for your life.

As you become more aware of your core beliefs, you can begin to detach from the ones that no longer serve you while allowing the ones that support you to begin to take hold. Talking to a therapist can help you leave your old belief systems behind.

The first step in any healing process is always awareness, acknowledgement and acceptance of what is true for you at the moment. You can’t heal anything by trying to block it out or by denying that it exists. You can heal by accepting what’s happening and then becoming aware that there are other possible choices.

You need to acknowledge and accept your thinking pattern as part of who you are. You can give yourself more expansive possibilities by recognizing and developing other perspectives.

Becoming aware of your thinking patterns and allowing them to change are crucial for improving your mental health as well as healing your life. By avoiding faulty thinking and learning to think clearly, you can make better choices in the way you handle your feelings. However, lasting change can only happen when you work on and integrate spiritual and emotional as well as mental healing.

Coupled with spiritual and emotional healing, mental healing can help tame your inner turmoil and help you behave in more effective and productive ways. By making changes in your behavior, you can bring lasting relief from your pain and suffering.

It takes time and practice to achieve mental healing, but the payoff is huge. By changing your thoughts and emotions, you can change your behavior and actions. In turn, changing your behavior and actions can change your life.

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About the author

Allie Mendoza helps entrepreneurs become self-employed successfully.​ You can turn your passions, talents, skills and interests into profitable business ideas.
You can make a living doing what you love. To learn more, visit: GoodWorksGoodBiz.com.